funtimedots.com
If there is one thing you can count of from the press and politicians its to use overworn phrases like they are trained parrots repeating what they heard without ever really understanding what they mean.. How many times have we heard politicians and hack journalists use the phrase, "Sooner rather than later" and "at the end of the day".
But ever since Condoleeza's Rice use of the term " we couldn't connect the dots" in response to why she and Bush didn't prevent 911, the press and politicians have made that the cliche used the most while not one journalist or politician including the most recent user, President Obama, has ever understood for a minute what it really meant.
They use it as if its a term of art used to describe some kind breakdown in a complicated system of far flung and disparate pieces of information that prevented someone from taking action when in truth it means exactly the opposite.
All of the irrefutable evidence ( and it IS irrefutable) is that Bush, Rice and Cheney had more than enough information to have made decisions and taken action that would have easily prevented 911. In fact its safe to say that had anyone other than Bush been president, Democrat or Republican -- Gore, Clinton, Powell, McCain -- anyone -- 911 would have been stopped in its tracks.
The intelligence agencies did their jobs. Bush had enough information to take action. They just didnt. The intelligence breakdown was not at the intelligence agencies. It was at Crawford Texas where Bush was vacationing and at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The fact that Bush, Rice and Cheney didn't act and the 911 attacks were successful, was explained away by Rice at a press conference as their not being able to "connect the dots".It was the only truthful admission Rice or anyone in the Bush Administration ever made about 911 and it was a subconscious confession on Rice's part that she, Bush and Cheney dropped the ball on 911 and couldn't do something that was actually very simple.
This truth went right over the heads of those observant professionals we have carrying press passes in this country.
Even if she didn't intend to make such an admission, she did. And it was her subconscious that betrayed her by confessing. Rice is a highly educated woman. She could have used many different phrases to explain why she and Bush didn't prevent 911. Instead she said, " we couldn't connect the dots".
And what does it mean when someone cant connect the dots? Connecting the dots is a child's game, something any child could do. You get a series of dots consecutively numbered and all you have to do is take a pencil and connect them and when you're finished you see the whole picture.
The dots were always there, right in front of their eyes. But as Rice admitted, the couldnt connect them. They never did what a child could do, what anyone could do, because they never tried.
What we know for a fact is that in their arrogance and stupidity they didn't think terrorism was a threat and never picked up a pencil to connect the dots given to them by Bill Clinton, Sandy Berger, Richard Clarke, the CIA, the FBI and other intelligence agencies for 8 months but with even greater urgency and clarity and specificity in August of 2001.
The couldn't connect the dots because they didn't think it was important enough to draw those lines from dot to dot so they only saw the whole picture after the World Trade Center was hit, the towers crashed to earth, the Pentagon was hit and 3000 people were killed. That's what it took for them to see the picture.
Today we keep hearing that silly and incriminating phrase " they couldn't connect the dots" as if it was an excuse, an artful term to explain a failure when it's really an indictment of gross negligence and incompetence leading to unncessary failure.
But those was not the failures of the intelligence agencies as Bush and Rice wanted us and the press to believe. It was the intelligence failures of the people given the information -- Bush, Cheney, and Rice. That is the real and true meaning of "we couldn't connect the dots".And that failure of intelligence also includes the news media who never understood Rice's confession, never understood the meaning of what " we couldn't connect the dots", really meant, and never held the Bush Administration accountable for their failures to see what was right in front of them which would have prevented 911.
Instead the press has adopted the phrase as have politicians and government bureaucrats and they continue to use the phrase like trained parrots,mimicking what Rice said without ever understanding a word of what it really meant. Which is how catastrophes happen. And history manages to repeat itself.
Now Obama, in his most recent comments on the flight 253 bomb attempt used the same tired old cliche -- that they they failed to connect the dots. Which does not exactly inspire confidence since aside from it being shopworn which shows there is no original thinking going on, it refers to what it has always referred to -- stupidity and incompetence at not being able to do something ridiculously easy.
Not connecting the dots is an admission of gross, virtually childish incompetence and a failure to do something that couldnt have been easier. That's what it was with Bush, Rice and Cheney as it related to the 911 attack. That's what it is with the news media. Hopefully Obama won't have any cause to use the term again.
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